WOMAN IN ART
Makara was the throne name of Hatasu, a solar name it is sometimes called, inasmuch as it affirms direct descent of the reigning monarch from ra, greatest of solar deities. Notice the interpretation of her name; it is significant. Ma was the name of the goddess of Truth, Law, Justice. Ka signified invisible life, that we call soul. Therefore the crude symbols on her cartouche would read thus: Through truth, law, and justice the invisible life receives vital manifestations of ra, their supreme deity over all.
There we have a royal title that is a religious creed, that gives the religious status of the people of the New Empire,—belief in a supreme being represented by the sun, which is under his control,—belief in an invisible soul that shall live eternally, the soul or ka being inspired by ra through truth, law, and justice as cardinal virtues or attributes. Note the symbol for ka, two hands uplifted imploringly.
As to the morals of that age we know little. What was right for royalty was doubtless right for the fellahs, or common people. Tothmes I, was father of Queen Hatasu; Tothmes II was her half brother by the second legal, but not royal wife. Bigamy was the practice. The daughter of the royal wife was given the throne before the death of her father, and wedded to her half brother Tothmes II. They had two daughters, and the one who survived was married to Tothmes III, a half brother by a third wife; all this because the royal line was on the mother's side. But the monarch of that dynasty was Hatasu, of vigor, of purpose, of achievement. Some of the finest wall paintings in Egypt, and the most elaborate temples, were produced during her reign and under her own supervision. So numerous are the hieroglyphics concerning this royal woman and her activities, and so well preserved are they, that she serves as a type of the ancient woman and her influence in the elaborating of Egyptian culture. Under her orders obelisks and temples were erected and gorgeously painted, and it is the art of her time existing today that gives us a little knowledge of that borderland of time.
So far as we know, portrait art originated in Egypt for the purpose of aiding the ka, after eons of rest, to find and recognize its former body or mummy. Hence the art of painting mummy cases, and carving in little and large, representations of the deceased. Such are found in tombs or are mammoth in size like the colossi that still adorn the rock-cliffs overlooking the Nile. Here again we find a tenet of their religion promulgating a characteristic racial art.
Bearing in mind that the wave theory applies to races and nations, no less than to sound and light, we find Egypt on the crest of nationalism about a thousand years B. C., and from that period, with glacier-like movement, her national life
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